An NSIDC team, cyrospheric data interface

Organizing the large quantities of data that CIRES scientists acquire is not a trivial task - and making that data intuitively searchable is even less so. However, the Searchlight team (MaryJo Brodzik, Brendan Billingsley, Julia Collins, Doug Fowler, Jonathan Kovarik, Donna Scott, Barbara O'Barr, Stephen Truex, Bruce Raup, Deann Miller) employed an uncommon focus of teamwork, technical innovation and simple hard work to create a new online interface and data system infrastructure for cryospheric data at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This interface not only will improve the efficiency of research at CIRES, but will allow researchers around the world to access and interact with NSIDC data, ranging from sea ice concentration to albedo. The team broke new ground in working together in a unique way using the "Agile software development approach". While Agile development is nothing new to software engineering, it is absolutely new to NSIDC, and was initially thought to be too risky to try. Despite management's initial skepticism, the team's passion and enthusiasm swayed them to allow the experiment. The team worked effectively and efficiently together and with frequent input from stakeholders to develop a cutting edge, searchable data infrastructure scheme. The Searchlight team is exemplary of what puts CIRES at the forefront of environmental research: a passion for trying new approaches, an ability to constructively interact in a team, and an enthusiasm for making cutting edge data accessible for research both within and outside of CIRES.